The fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly (and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered): Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?

Gilles Deleuze, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Deleuze & Guattari: Anti-Oedipus

a heart that's full up like a landfill

Delirium is the general matrix of every unconscious social investment. Every unconscious investment mobilizes a delirious interplay of disinvestments, of counterinvestments, of overinvestments. But we have seen in this context that there were two major types of social investment, segregative and nomadic, just as there were two poles of delirium: first, a paranoiac fascisizing (fascisanf) type or pole that invests the formation of central sovereignty; overinvests it by making it the final eternal cause for all the other social forms of history; counterinvests the enclaves or the periphery; and disinvests every free “figure” of desire—yes, I am your kind, and I belong to the superior race and class. And second, a schizorevolutionary type or pole that follows the lines of escape of desire; breaches the wall and causes flows to move; assembles its machines and its groups-in-fusion in the enclaves or at the periphery—proceeding in an inverse fashion from that of the other pole: I am not your kind, I belong eternally to the inferior race, I am a beast, a black. Good people say that we must not flee, that to escape is not good, that it isn’t effective, and that one must work for reforms. But the revolutionary knows that escape is revolutionary—withdrawal, freaks—provided one sweeps away the social cover on leaving, or causes a piece of the system to get lost in the shuffle. What matters is to break through the wall, even if one has to become black like John Brown. George Jackson. ‘I may take flight, but all the while I am fleeing, I will be looking for a weapon!’

Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane)

A true politics of psychiatry, or anti-psychiatry, would consist therefore in the following praxis: (1) undoing all the reterritorializations that transform madness into mental illness; (2) liberating the schizoid movement of deterritorialization in all the flows, in such a way that this characteristic can no longer qualify a particular residue as a flow of madness, but affects just as well the flows of labor and desire, of production, knowledge, and creation in their most profound tendency. Here, madness would no longer exist as madness, not because it would have been transformed into "mental illness," but on the contrary because it would receive the support of all the other flows, including science and art—once it is said that madness is called madness and appears as such only because it is deprived of this support, and finds itself reduced to testifying all alone for deterritorialization as a universal process. It is merely its unwarranted privilege, a privilege beyond its capacities, that renders it mad. In this perspective Foucault announced an age when madness would disappear, not because it would be lodged within the controlled space of mental illness ("great tepid aquariums"), but on the contrary because the exterior limit designated by madness would be overcome by means of other flows escaping control on all sides, and carrying us along.

– Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Perhaps one day one will no longer know clearly what madness really was...Artaud will belong to the ground of our language, and not to its rupture...Everything that we experience today in the mode of the limit, or of strangeness, or of the unbearable, will have joined again with the serenity of the positive. And what for us currently designates this Exterior stands a chance, one day, of designating us.

– Michel Foucault, History of Madness

This blog rules. I love all the readings and excerpts in your selfhood tag. Do you have any kind of reading list for existential philosophy you could share? I've been really wanting to dive in lately but I'm intimidated about where to start.

hey you rule also.

here's everything i've been surrounding myself with lately—not limited to existential philosophy but i think all migrating through the same waters:

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus; The Stranger; The Plague Sartre, Nausea; Being and Nothingness E.M. Cioran, A Short History of Decay; The Trouble With Being Born R.D. Laing, The Divided Self Jung, Modern Man In Search of a Soul; Psychology and the Occult Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading Clarice Lispector, The Apple in the Dark Kafka, The Trial Deleuze & Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia Andrew Scull, Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry and the Mysteries of Mental Illness; Madhouses, Mad-Doctors, and Madmen: The Social History of Psychiatry in the Victorian Era Kay Redfield Jamison, Fires in the Dark: Healing the Unquiet Mind Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous Lisa Miller, The Awakened Brain: The Psychology of Spirituality The Tibetan Book of the Dead

Your understanding of succession is very nuanced and I find reading your takes very enriching! All I wish is to have your literary analysis skills. If you could share where you started in understanding topics like psychoanalysis, bodily fluids as a symbol, using political lens to understand lit, or anything like that, that would be much appreciated! Sorry if this has been asked before, if you could direct me to that post I’d appreciate that

hi! i wouldn't consider myself any kind of expert in lit crit and i think it's something i continue to get better at just by doing more of it. so i'm not sure how helpful i can be here lol. but, some texts that have probably formed theoretical foundations for my reading of succession are:

history of shit, by dominique laporte, tr. rodolphe el-khoury

water and dreams: an essay on the imagination of matter, by gaston bachelard, tr. edith r. farrell

psychoanalysis of fire, by gaston bachelard, tr. alan c. m. ross

marx's 1844 manuscripts

anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia, by gilles deleuze & félix guattari, tr. robert hurley, mark seem, & helen r. lane

body fascism: salvation in the technology of physical fitness, by brian pronger

'malthus and the evolutionists', by robert m. young

the birth of biopolitics: lectures at the collège de france, 1978–79, by michel foucault, tr. graham burchell

discipline and punish: the birth of the prison, by michel foucault, tr. alan sheridan

faces of degeneration: a european disorder, 1848–1918, by daniel pick

capitalist realism, by mark fisher

three essays on the theory of sexuality, by sigmund freud, tr. james strachey

society of the spectacle, by guy debord, tr. donald nicholson-smith

le paris moderne: histoire des politiques d'hygiène, 1855–1898, by fabienne chevallier

we have never been modern, by bruno latour, tr. catherine porter

the arcades project, by walter benjamin, tr. howard eiland & kevin mclaughlin

french modern: norms and forms of the social environment, by paul rabinow

"That is why the fundamental problem of political philosophy is still precisely the one that Spinoza saw so clearly, and that Wilhelm Reich rediscovered: "Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?" How can people possibly reach the point of shouting: "More taxes! Less bread!"? As Reich remarks, the astonishing thing is not that some people steal or that others occasionally go out on strike, but rather that all those who are starving do not steal as a regular practice, and all those who are exploited are not continually out on strike: after centuries of exploitation, why do people still tolerate being humiliated and enslaved, to such a point, indeed, that they actually want humiliation and slavery not only for others but for themselves? Reich is at his profoundest as a thinker when he refuses to accept ignorance or illusion on the part of the masses as an explanation of fascism, and demands an explanation that will take their desires into account, an explanation formulated in terms of desire: no, the masses were not innocent dupes; at a certain point, under a certain set of conditions, they wanted fascism, and it is this perversion of the desire of the masses that needs to be accounted for."

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Page 29)

The Saera Targaryen & Aegon II Targaryen Compendium :3c

“Courage consists, however, in agreeing to flee rather than live tranquilly and hypocritically in false refuges. Values, morals, homelands, religions, and these private certitudes that our vanity and our complacency bestow generously on us, have many deceptive sojourns as the world arranges for those who think they are standing straight and at ease, among stable things” —Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (George R.R. Martin, Fire & Blood. 2018; A Clash of Kings. 1998 / House of the Dragon. 2022)

Shit on your whole mortifying, imaginary, and symbolic theater!

Gilles Deleuze, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

yo this Gilles Deleuze guy uhhhhh. i understood the thing that quote is from pretty interesting pretty cool but um. that capitalism and schizophrenia: anti-oedipus stuff i understood the preface and introduction but it lost me by chapter 2.

have you read it? did you get it? how am i supposed to get it? i feel like i need to have a degree in psychoanalysis or some shit to understand it

i have not read it. i wouldn't stress not getting it tho. don't feel duty bound to read and understand theory. do it because it enriches your life, helps to bring joy.

that said, he's french, and personally i find the act of translating to be enlightening, even if i don't actually know the langauge. something about the literal translations can sometimes make things click in my mind. even just taking the english version and 'translating' that, going thru it slowly, rephrasing sentences, cutting out the bits that are distracting you. perhaps even translating it into diagrams, so you can visualize it.

i find also that it's helpful to just sit with your lack of understanding a bit. let it be a thorn in your side, a pest that keeps buzzing around in your head. tying it back to language again, immerse yourself. go thru the related tags, reading selected quotes, pushing thru your lack of understanding. eventually you may start to get an intuitive sense of things, even if you could't articulate that understanding. but also trying to articulate it anyway. talking it out can be very helpful, even if the other party doesn't have any input whatsoever.

reading up on psychoanalysis might help too, as well as digging into the history of these thoughts. dig down to the foundations, see what its being built on. elbisneherpmocni sraeppa yllaitini tahw fo esnes ekam nac ,sdrawkcab tsuj si ecnetnes siht gniwonk ekil ,txetnoc (read that backwards)

read wiki and other summaries, follow the sources. personally, im a bit of a 'cast a wide net' sorta person. i like variety, cross pollination of ideas, getting the big picture, seeing the forest. maybe you're more of a details sorta person, but i hope this helps and gives you some idea to go off of.

Deleuze & Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus

Do you recommend any books or articles about the impacts of post-industrial capitalism and the commodification of literally everything? Its definitely something dark going on surrounding millennials and gen z with the impact of tik tok, IG, etc. Like idk how to describe it but it makes me sick. Everything feels like a constant state of anxiety and a bottomless pit of consumption. One of my professors even pointed out that younger generations are numbed by nihilism and a general feeling of hopelessness for the future. Its like a lot of us cope with our lack of control in the world by shallow attempts of aestheticizing/perfecting our lives. There is no room for imperfection, individuality, or even true love it seems its all so wrapped up in status. This is scary, thanks for talking about this.

I've just finished Capitalist Realism and highly suggest it- Most books about capitalism use tricky wording and Fisher really uses easy to understand language if you're new to it all. I've been meaning to read The Society of the Spectacle by Debord, also Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Fredric Jameson! Also have heard great things about Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media by Benjamin. And you are so correct about everything, it's sounds so dreary and negative but it's true. I think living your life like, for example, a Moshfegh sad girl coquette character that's been popularised through Tik Tok and Instagram is just the continuation of consumption, loss of individuality and aesthetic nihilism that does absolutely nothing sadly.

[S]chizophrenia is not the identity of capitalism, but on the contrary its difference, its divergence, and its death.

Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane)

Desire knows nothing of exchange, it knows only theft and gift.

– Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia